The present invention relates to food products and to their methods of preparation. More particularly, the present invention relates to low sugar, pre-sweetened breakfast cereals and to their methods of preparation mimicking sugar coated presweetened cereals.
Sugar coated pre-sweetened breakfast cereals have long been commercially available and popular packaged consumer food items. Such cereals have been prepared by first producing unsweetened cereal pieces, coating the cereal pieces with slurry comprising sucrose and/or other sugars and drying the coated pieces in an oven or air current.
Ready-to-eat (“R-T-E”) or breakfast cereal pieces are typically prepared by cooking a cereal dough, shaping the dough into pellets or flakes and puffing or toasting the shaped dough. In other variations, pieces or cereal grains are cooked and puffed to form puffed cereal grain pieces such as puffed rice or puffed wheat.
One approach for preparing breakfast cereal flakes is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 1,161,323. A grain material such as corn grits is combined with salt, cane sugar and water. The combination is heated in a steam-tight cooker thereby cooking the grain material. The cooked grains are partially dried and then passed between spaced, smooth-surfaced flaking rolls. The resulting flakes are puffed by baking or roasting.
In other instances whole kernels of grain have been puffed to provide a breakfast cereal. U.S. Pat. No. 1,266,448 shows such a process in which rice kernels are soaked in water for approximately 36 hours. The kernels are then subjected to heat until the kernel surface is dried. The dried kernels are popped in a popper much like popcorn.
A further process for preparing ready-to-eat breakfast cereals is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,453,115. Cereal dough is prepared from any of various cereals such as corn, wheat, barley, or oats. The dough is pressure cooked and pelletized. The pellets are partially dried to provide case hardening and then flaked between rolls.
The various ready-to-eat breakfast cereals have been sweetened by coating the finished cereal pieces with either noncrystalline sugar or crystalline sugar such as sucrose. One advantageous process for preparing a ready-to-eat pre-sweetened cereal is set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 3,615,676. The previous unsweetened cereals have had the disadvantage that table sugar, which is added to the cereal and milk mixture at the time of eating, in fact is added in excess and remains in the bottom of the cereal bowl after the cereal has been consumed. The pre-sweetened cereals overcome such disadvantage and provide an appropriate amount of sugar which is not wasted. The pre-sweetened coated cereals, however, have been limited to cereals having a sucrose sweetening agent.
A cereal presweetened with sweetening agents such as fructose that are normally in a liquid state such as high fructose corn syrup is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,089,984 “Sweet Coatings For Food Products” (issued to May 16, 1978 Gilbertson). Illustrative sweetening agents of this type are honey and/or high fructose corn syrup corn syrup. Since such liquid sweeteners result in a sticky coated product, such coatings are taught as essentially including a non sugar particulate dusting, to dehydrate to a solid non-adhesive state.
In still another example, fructose based sweet coatings for R-T-E cereals are described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,379,171 Method for preparing food products with sweet fructose coatings issued Apr. 5, 1983 to Furda et al. The coating contains a mixture of crystalline fructose and high fructose corn syrup.
Recent consumer interest has focused upon low sugar products including low sugar presweetened R-T-E cereals. Such products can be prepared by eliminating the sugars' components and presweetened such as with a topical coating including a high potency sweetener such as aspartame (See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,378,377 issued Mar. 29, 1983 to Gajewski that describes using a water soluble vegetable protein isolate as an adhesive to attach aspartame to the cereal pieces. Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 4,540,587 issued Sep. 10, 1985 to Gajewski describes using water soluble gums to help adhere the aspartame to the cereal pieces). Consumer oat based products prepared using these techniques have long been available commercially in Canada under the Pro Stars™ mark.
While popular, such low sugar products can suffer from the absence of certain physical and organoleptic attributes provided by the presence of sugar based pre-sweetener coatings. In particular, the products can lack the bite or crispness, surface sheen and bowl life in milk exhibited by sugar containing pre-sweetener coatings.
Given the state of the art as described above, there is a continuing need for improved low sugar pre-sweetener coatings and to coated comestibles prepared therewith especially dried food products such as R-T-E cereals and to their methods of preparation.
The present invention satisfies this need by providing pre-sweetener coating compositions comprising high conversion maltodextrin or low conversion corn syrups and a high potency sweetener(s) with low sugars levels, as well as low sugar presweetened comestibles topically coated with such coating compositions such as dried food product such as R-T-E cereals.
Certain RTE cereal are provided with a cinnamon flavor such as those available under the Cinnamon Toast Crunch™ brand name. Generally, dried RTE cereal pieces in the form of planar squares are sprayed with an edible oil and a dry particulate admixture of sucrose and powdered cinnamon is dusted on to the oil coated food pieces to form the popular cinnamon flavored presweetened coated cereal. The present invention provides an improvement whereby a high conversion maltodextrin or low conversion corn syrup is provided in the form of syrup solids of particular sized particles in substitution for the particulate sugar(s), especially sucrose, to provide a low sugar pre-sweetened coated cinnamon flavored RTE cereal having taste, texture and appearance attributes that mimic those provided by the conventional sucrose coated products.
Likewise, the present invention provides an improvement in the pre-sweetened dry coated cereal products described in U.S. Ser. No. 280,568 “Cereal Having Powdered Sugar Coating and Method of Preparation” (filed Jul. 6, 1981 to Gilbertson et al., now abandoned. See, equivalently, Canadian patent No 1,168,919 issued Jun. 12, 1984). The products described therein include a topical oil coating and high levels of powdered sugar (sucrose) especially on “O” shaped puffed RTE cereal pieces to form a pre-sweetened RTE cereal reminiscent of powdered sugars doughnuts. Consumer food breakfast RTE cereals were marketed in the U.S.A. and Canada under the Donuts!™ brand name briefly in the 1980's.